Lifestyle and Art Magazine

The 12 Archetypes of Hippies

What is a hippie?

A hippie for the purpose of this article is a person who advocates creativity, freedom of expression and smelly natural oils. However, different hippies require refined definition. We have compiled two lists of various types of hippies and their attributes to share (Part 2 out next week), so you can identify and get the most out of your relationships with them.

1. Original Flower-Power Stoner Hippies

These original psychedelic groovers are still clad in garish tie-dyed rainbow clothing and are in isolated country towns converted into communes during the 60s/70s. These placid creatures consume weed, strum sitars, and write poetry about the coming apocalypse. Think Neil from the Young Ones.

Music tastes include psychedelic rock and blues as Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, but they have difficulty encompassing modern electronic sounds like any other boomer. Do not harsh mellow or confront with realities, as they must deal with living in the 21st century and are no longer able to walk around naked and free. Vegetable rights and peace, man.

2. Urban Anarchist Punk Hippies

Nihilistic and gloomy, these dour and sharp-tongued creatures can be found squatting within the bowels of any abandoned warehouse. Their ethos is “Do It Yourself: and they live off the urban fall-out of society, raiding department store bins and creating their own way where no way is provided.

They commonly listen to breakcore, harsh noise, punk and heavy metal – anything that upsets others or that normies don’t get. They delight in chaos, facilitate freedom of expression and actually enjoy being called shit, but don’t restrict their freedom or criticise their liberal notions. Interchangable with Goths, Indie Bands and Steampunks.

3. Art Star Hipster Hippies

The cool kids and modern-day Mods. The elite corps of hippies will actively protest being called a hippy or hipster, but their liberated ethos and drive for expression and creativity suggest otherwise. Hobbies include networking, procrastinating and smelling their own farts. They usually work in office or bar jobs during the week, and live for the weekend.

They live for music and art, and create liberal, sophisticated communities that facilitate the latest in technology, techno and bass sounds, and graphic design. However, they tend to be clicky, their aloofness alienates outsiders and they hate all other hippies and psytrance. The best way to make friends with them is to discuss how awesome their artwork is.

Different categories of hippies here include local DJs, promoters, bar managers and graphic designers.

4. New-Age Capitalist Cult Hippies

Predators usually of urban origin and former sales people, these charismatic hippies brainwash others into forking out dough for dodgy pseudo-spiritual workshops that cater for ego, yoga retreats and dubious new-age products. They link such phrases as “quantum physics” and “metaphysical scaffolding” with anything religious or psychological, which will make perfect sense with their radiant and perfect personalities.

They listen to inspirational rainforest music with low frequencies of hypnotic suggestion and will generally offer the first step of their personal growth program for a reduced price. You may find meaning for your grey existence through these hippies and have some crazy orgy opportunities, but are inevitably on track for a deadly Kool-aid party in a bunker or the cult leader will fuck off to the Bahamas with everyone’s money.

These hippies include major festival promoters, psychics and reiki practitioners within their ranks.

5. Social Justice Student Hippies

Fresh off their parent’s coat-tails and plunged into the real world, these budding hippies have discovered basic concepts of social justice in their first-year lectures, and will unfailingly and annoyingly stand up for any equitable notion via social media through sharing loaded links. They enjoy any kind of music as long as it’s inclusive of females and minorities with positive social content, although they will listen to Kendrick Lamar and NWA when drunk.

The scourge of drug dealers for credit, weekend warriors of doofs (as long as their friends come too), these hippies will inevitably become legal and social community workers of passion and then be ground down by impending reality and families. Don’t challenge their views or they will attempt to “educate” you or create a campaign against your bigotry at GetUp.

6. Mainstreamer Wholesome Mum and Dad Hippies

The cool parents. Also of the boomer generation and of impeccable position on the moral compass, these hippies are able to camouflage within mainstream society, but have a life-altering call to make a difference through active protest and voting wisely at elections. Now they can teleport instantly to any banking, mining or G20 summit convention protest to join the righteous ranks of world-changers.

They write passionate and pointed letters to editors but generally won’t rock the boat of their extremely conventional lives, as they are basically closet original hippies. At home they listen to world and classical music, but you can see these aging warriors at occasional festivals like Rainbow Serpent finding common ground with their children, although they may microdosed some LSD and smoked some weed when their kids aren’t watching.

7. Emerging Butterfly Psy-Bogan Hippie

These young weekend warriors don’t have any parties to go to except for doofs and festivals because they live regionally in the middle of fucking nowhere. Due to their upbringing and peers, they spout casual bigotry but are trying their best to be accepting people. They love their chunk duga-duga and will be seen drunkenly hitting the dancefloor draped in Aussie flags, and camping with the same mates they went to primary school with. They are approachable and friendly, and are after the same freedoms as everyone else.

Psy-bogans undergo the deepest changes of anyone at doofs. The more LSD they consume, the more marked changes seen in their lives, having them transforming to organic vegan/earth hippies to fire-twirling ferals to art-star hipsters to hardcore militant Christian fundamentalists. However, half stay the same from adolescence onwards, eventually accumulating a nuclear family, farm house, refrigerated esky and ute for the chunk rig.

8. Organic vegan earth farmer/world saver

Pragmatic beings, these hippies are walking the walk and saving the planet, or at least have cultivated self-sustainability into their deep loathing of humanity. They are deeply aware of their impact on the world and live how they think everyone else should live. They are gentle practitioners of permaculture, horticulture and veganism.

Because their own ethics are so impeccable, they are at odds with mere mortals. They will not allow meat or brand name products in their house and will shut down their own parents with quiet, tense words of barely contained rage at the slightest imposition on their reality. Their organic understanding isn’t grounded in research and they will back up their opinions from Google University. If challenged too much, they will go nuts and misrepresent their views with the looseness of an angry toddler with a machine gun.

9. Ditzy Hot Yogi Mum

Powerful goddess, fragile girl and wild woman in one, sharing angel images with inspirational messages near you. They live in or near Byron Bay, have an abusive alcoholic ex-husband and have bred handsome children named after Indian deities, who smoke bongs in the garage and hate everything. A middle-aged, friend-zoned man accompanies her and is assigned to maintenance and living in a van. She writes and self-publishes angsty poetry about caged birds, teaches yoga, attends expressionist dancing groups and draws trees.

Yogi mums are fantastic and active listeners who always tell you how amazing you are, even if you aren’t. They are influenced by dominant female hippies, cult members, online scams, spiritual practices with -ology or Chiron in them, and any ungrounded health/diet practices. They are against big pharma, are pro-animal rights and will back any charity with emotional YouTube clips. They have more skeletons in their closet than a $2 shop after Halloween.

10. Fashionista festival Jetsetters

Designer dreads and threads, sky’s the limit with this uber breed. They globetrot to doofs in pristine and fashionable glamping locations in the Swiss Alps or Mexican Deserts. They come from wealth, or work as life-coaches and have a kombucha or clothing sideline on eBay. You will want to be with them or like them. They fill haters with hate with their yolo confidence, elven beauty, and gracious platitudes of global equity and environmentalism espoused over hash joints in Amsterdam cafes.

They are privy to the same rampant consumerism as the normies they despise and are basically a plague of rainbow-colored locusts. However, locusts eat to live whilst FFJs will rely on others to pick out the tastiest morsels for them and then throw out the rest, although they post a sad-face selfie on Instagram maintaining sorrow for the waste.

11. Footloose free-spirited grandparents

These cute silver-haired (or bald) born-again children have finally got their own kids out the door. They have made up their mind to break their mold and pursue their creative life urges. They now dance, travel, and embrace new experiences all over the world, rather than blowing it all on the pokies in an RSL.

This is generally awesome to witness unless you are near a nudist beach. It might also be prudent to watch your hippy grandparents around younger friends with hash brownies at doofs, as they may not need any artificial augmentation and may be prone to existential crisis when stoned. Someone will have to look after them at doofs and encourage them to dance or tell long-winded stories at campsites, so as they don’t get freaked out by 2018 or start making casually bigoted remarks. Or maybe you want the latter for sheer amusement.

12. Feral Fire-Twirling Hippie

Seemingly out of a Mad Max movie on DMT. These doof veterans are encountered at sound systems on the fringes of deserts and civilisation. They are the freakiest of the freaks and only socialise with their own kind via some sort of osmosis/telepathy, as they are unable to communicate with regular people due to consumption of every psychedelic there is. Their hygiene and lack of manners make them less than ideal dinner guests.

They basically pioneered doofs on the DIY tip, with the understanding they would provide and create everything themselves. They have some sort of wizard understanding of the life, universe and everything, and can make a fully operating vehicle out of mud and twigs. They are great for your zombie apocalypse team for their pragmatic worldliness. Not to be confused with urban punk hippies, although their politics are the same. Urban punks discuss anarchy based on society’s entropy, whilst ferals create sustainable society where none exists.